Introduction to data mining

Introduction to data mining

Literature

Data mining in commerce • About 13 million customers per month contact the West Coast customer service call center of the Bank of America • In the past, each caller would have listened to the same marketing advertisement, whether or not it was relevant to the caller’s interests. • Chris Kelly, vice president and director of database marketing: “rather than pitch the product of the week, we want to be as relevant as possible to each customer” • Thus, based on individual customer profiles, the customer can be informed of new products that may be of greatest interest. • Data mining helps to identify the type of marketing approach for a particular customer, based on the customer’s individual profile.

Recommendation systems

Why mine data – commercial viewpoint • Lots of data is being collected • Web data, e-commerce • purchases at department/grocery stores • Bank/Credit Card transactions • Computers have become cheaper and more powerful • Competitive pressure is strong • Provide better, customized services R. Grossman, C. Kamath, V. Kumar, “Data Mining for Scientific and Engineering Applications”

Why mine data – scientific viewpoint • Data collected and stored at enormous speeds (GB/hour) • remote sensors on a satellite • telescopes scanning the skies • microarrays generating gene expression data • scientific simulations generating terabytes of data • Traditional techniques infeasible for raw data • Data mining may help scientists • in classifying and segmenting data • in hypothesis formation R. Grossman, C. Kamath, V. Kumar, “Data Mining for Scientific and Engineering Applications”

Data mining in bioinformatics • Brain tumors represent the most deadly cancer among children • Gene expression database for pediatric brain tumors was built, in an effort to develop more effective treatment.

Clearly, a lot of data is being collected. • However, what is being learned from all this data? What knowledge are we gaining from all this information? • “we are drowning in information but starved for knowledge” • The problem today is not that there is not enough data. Rather, the problem is that there are not enough trained human analysts available who are skilled at translating all of this data into knowledge.

Data mining is the process of discovering meaningful new correlations, patterns and trends by sifting through large amounts of data stored in repositories, using pattern recognition technologies as well as statistical an mathematical techniques. (www.gartner.com) • Data mining is an interdisciplinary field bringing togther techniques from machine learning, pattern recognition, statistics, databases, and visualization to address the issue of information extraction from large data bases. (Peter Cabena, Pablo Hadjinian, Rolf Stadler, JaapVerhees, and Alessandro Zanasi, Discovering Data Mining: From Concept to Implementation, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1998.)

The growth in this field has been fueled by several factors: • growth in data collection • storing of the data in data warehouses • availability of increased access to data from Web • competitive pressure to increase market share • development of data mining software suites • tremendous growth in computing power and storage capacity

Need for human direction of DM • Don’t believe software vendors advertising their analytical software as being plug-and-play out-of-the-box application providing solutions without the need of human interaction! • Data mining is not a product that can be bought, it is a discipline that must be mastered!

It is easy to do data mining badly. • Software always gives some result. • A little knowledge is especially dangerous • e.g. analysis carried out on unpreprocessed data can lead to errorneous conclusions, the models can be way off • if deployed, the errors can lead to very expensive failures • The costly errors stem from the black-box approach.

Data maning trap • If we try hard enough, we always find some patterns. • However, they may be just a matter of chance. They don’t have to be characteristic for process that generates the data. • Derogatory sport definition of data mining: • Data mining means sorting through a huge volume of data, extracting decision rules that seem to favor one team over another, but without regard to whether or not there is any cause-and-effect relationship. Data mining is the equivalent of sitting a huge number of monkeys down at keyboards, and then reporting on the monkeys who happened to type actual words.

Instead, apply a “white-box” methodology. • i.e. understand algorithms and statistical model structures underlying a software • The white-box approach is the reason why you are attending this lecture (apart from the fact, that the lecture is compulsory).

Data mining as a process • One of the fallacies associated with DM is that DM represents an isolated set of tools • Instead, DM should be viewed as a process • The process is standardized – CRISP-DM framework (http://www.crisp-dm.org/) • Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining • developed in 1996 by analysts from DaimlerChrysler, SPSS, and NCR • provides a nonproprietary and freely available standard process for fitting data mining into the general problem-solving strategy of a business or research unit

CRISP-DM starts here

Business understanding phase • Formulate the project objectives and requirements • Data understanding phase • collect the data • use EDA (exploratory data analysis) to familiarize yourself with the data • evaluate the quality of the data • Data preparation phase • prepare from the initial raw data the final data set. This phase is very labor intensive. • select the cases and variables you want to analyze • perform transformation of variables, if needed • clean the raw data so they are ready for modelling tools

Modeling phase • select and apply appropriate modeling techniques • calibrate model settings to optimize results • often, several different techniques may be used • if necessary, loop back to the data preparation phase to bring the form of the data into line with the specific requirements of a particular data mining technique • Evaluation phase • evaluate models for quality and effectivness • establish whether some important facet of the business or research problem has not been accounted for sufficiently

Deployment phase • make use of the models created • examples of deployment: • report • implement a parallel DM process in another department

CRISP-DM example Investigated patterns in the warranty claims for DaimlerChrysler automobiles • Business understanding • Objectives: reduce costs associated with warranty claims and improve customer satisfaction • Specific business problems can be formulated: • Are there interdependencies among warranty claims? • Are past warranty claims associated with similar claims in the future? Jochen Hipp and Guido Lindner, Analyzing warranty claims of automobiles: an application description following the CRISP–DM data mining process, in Proceedings of the 5th International Computer Science Conference (ICSC ’99), pp. 31–40, Hong Kong, December 13–15, 1999

Data understanding • use of DaimlerChrysler’s Quality Information System (QUIS) • it contains information on over 7 million vehicles and is about 40 gigabytes in size • QUIS contains production details about how and where a particular vehicle was constructed + warranty claim information • researchers stressed the fact that the database was entirely unintelligible to domain nonexperts • experts from different departments had to be located and consulted, a task that turned out to be rather costly

Data preparation • the QUIS DB did not contain all information needed for the modelling purposes • e.g. the variable “number of days from selling date until first claim” had to be derived from the appropriate date attributes • researchers then turned to DM software where they ran into a common roadblock: data format requirements varied from algorithm to algorithm • result was further exhaustive preprocessing of the data • researchers mention that the data preparation phase took much longer than they had planned

Modeling • to investigate dependencies, researchers used • Bayesian networks • Association rules mining • the details of the results are confidential, but we can get general idea of dependencies uncovered by models • particular combination of construction specifications doubles the probability of encountering an automobile electrical cable problem

Evaluation • The researchers were disappointed that association rules models were found to be lacking in effectiveness and to fall short of the objectives set for them in the business understanding phase • “In fact, we did not find any rule that our domain experts would judge as interesting.” • To account for this, the researchers point to the “legacy” structure of the database, for which automobile parts were categorized by garages and factories for historic or technical reasons and not designed for data mining. • They suggest redesigning the database to make it more amenable to knowledge discovery.

Deployment • It was a pilot project, without intention to deploy any large-scale models from the first iteration. • Product: report describing lessons learned from this project • e.g. change of the structure of the database (new variables, different categorization of automobile parts)

Lessons learned • uncovering hidden nuggets of knowledge in databases is a rocky road • intense human participation and supervision is required at every stage of the data mining process • there is no guarantee of positive results

Connection to other fields Machine learning Pattern recognition Vizualization Data Mining Database systems Statistics

Machine learning • A subfield of artificial intelligence. • Discipline that is concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behavior based on experience. • experience – empirical data, such as from sensors or databases • evolve behavior – usually through search of patterns in data • similar goal as DM, DM uses algorithms from ML

Pattern recognition • Problem of searching patterns - a fundamental one, long and successful history. • For instance, the extensive astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe in the 16th century allowed Johannes Kepler to discover the empirical laws of planetary motion, which in turn provided a springboard for the development of classical mechanics.

Pattern recognition • automatic discovery of regularities in data through the use of computer algorithms and with the use of these regularities to take actions such as classifying the data into different categories

Pattern recognition data patterns • if train has 2 wagons, it goes to the left

More real patterns face detection

Iris Sample Data Set • Many of the exploratory data techniques are illustrated with the Fisher’s Iris Plant data set. • From the statistician Douglas Fisher, mid-1930s • Can be obtained from the UCI Machine Learning Repository http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mlearn/MLRepository.html based on WEKA tutorial

iris setosa iris versicolor iris virginica Contains flower dimension measurements on 50 samples of each species. Fisher, R.A. (1936). "The Use of Multiple Measurements in Taxonomic Problems". Annals of Eugenics7: 179–188, http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/coll/special//fisher/138.pdf.

These dimensions were measured: • sepal (kališní lístek) length • sepalwidth • petal (korunní lístek) length • petal width • Measurements on these iris species: • setosa • versicolor • virginica • Data mining terminology • The four iris dimensions are termed attributes, input attributes, features • The three iris species are termed classes, output attributes • Each example of an iris is termed a sample, instance, object, data point based on WEKA tutorial

Sample Class Nominal Numerical based on WEKA tutorial

Statistics • statistical analysis • summary statistics (mean, median, standard deviation) • Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) • A preliminary exploration of the data to better understand its characteristics. • Created by statistician John Tukey • A nice online introduction can be found in Chapter 1 of the NIST Engineering Statistics Handbook http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.htm

EDA • Helps to select the right tool for preprocessing or analysis • People can recognize patterns not captured by data analysis tools • In EDA, as originally defined by Tukey • The focus was on visualization • Clustering and anomaly detection were viewed as exploratory techniques • In data mining, clustering and anomaly detection are major areas of interest, and not thought of as just exploratory • Human makes and validates hypotheses • While in DM computer makes and validates hypotheses

versicolor setosa virginica based on WEKA tutorial

versicolor virginica setosa based on WEKA tutorial

sepal width sepal length based on WEKA tutorial

Visualization • Can reveal hypotheses based on WEKA tutorial

Data warehouse • A data warehouse is a repository of an organization's electronically stored data. • Data warehouses are designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. • Technology: • relational database system • multidimensional database system

Data warehousing • process of constructing and using data warehouse • Data warehousing is the coordinated, periodic copying ofdata from various sources, both inside and outside the enterprise, intoan environment optimized for analytical and informational processing.

data warehousing includes • business intelligence tools • tools to extract, transform, and load data • tools to manage and retrieve metadata

Business intelligence tools • a type of application software designed to report, analyze and present data • they include • reporting and querying software • “Tell me what happened.” • tools that extract, sort, summarize, and present selected data • OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing ) • “Tell me what happened and why.” • data mining • “Tell me what might happened.” (predict) • “Tell me something interesting.” (relationships)

OLAP • Query and report data is typically presented in row afterrow of two-dimensional data. • OLAP: “Tell me what happened and why.” • To support this type of processing, OLAP operates against multidimensional databases.

Introduction to data mining